Deuteronomy 22-24; Psalm 47; Galatians 4

Deuteronomy 22
1-12 Miscellaneous Laws

• Do what you can to return a lost possession (animal or thing) to its owner
• Help a neighbor's fallen animal
• No cross dressing. I paraphrased it this way because I think that's the intent: To dress like a man in order to look like a man, or vice versa. There are some who would go to this passage to forbid women from wearing slacks (which are designed exclusively for women to wear). I would say if they use this for an authority, they must also have houses with flat roofs with parapets, they must never wear a polyester-cotton blend; and they must tassel their coats.
  
• If you find a nest, you may take the baby birds or the eggs, but not the mother
• If you build a house, you must build a parapet (any low protective wall or barrier at the edge of a balcony, roof, bridge, or the like) for the roof to prevent accidents
  
• Do not sow a vineyard with a second kind of seed; nor plow with a donkey and ox yoked together; nor wear clothes of wool and linen woven together. Was this for practical or symbolic reasons?
• Make tassels for the four corners of your cloak.

13-30 Regarding Sexual Relations

• A man who makes a false accusation regarding his wife's virginity before their marriage will be fined 100 shekels of silver, if evidence proves him false.
• If the charge is true, the men of her town are to stone her to death.
• Adulterers -- a man with another man's wife, or one betrothed -- shall die. If he has raped her, only the man dies.
• If a man forces a virgin, he is to pay her father 50 shekels and marry her, and will not be allowed to divorce her.
• A man shall not marry his father's wife. This must refer to a woman who is not his mother and after his father either divorces her or dies.

Deuteronomy 23
1-8 Excluded from the assembly:

• Sexually maimed men
• Illegitimate children - to the 10th generation
• Ammonites or Moabites - to the 10th generation
• Edomites or Egyptians to the 3rd generation, but do not abhor them

9-25 Sanitary, Ritual and Humanitarian Precepts

• Bury excrement outside the camp
  
• Do not return or oppress escaped slaves
• Do not permit temple prostitution; wages from such denied as payment in a vow
• Do not charge interest to another Israelite
• Either keep your vows or don't make them in the first place
• Eat what you want in your neighbor's vineyard, but you must not carry any out
• You may pluck and eat your neighbor's grain, but you may not cut it

Deuteronomy 24
1-4 Marriage and Divorce - If a man divorces his wife and she marries again, he cannot take her back if she is divorced again or widowed. It is not forbidden, though, for a man to divorce his wife just because she displeases him.

5-12 Miscellaneous Laws

• A newlywed man must not be sent out with the army until after the first year of marriage
• Kidnapping punishable by death
• Laws re:
• Leprosy - Remember Miriam
• Pledges, especially from the poor
• Withholding wages
• Paying penalty for another person's capital crime
• Justice for aliens
• A widow's pledge: Remember you were slaves once
• Leaving field gleanings for widows and orphans: Remember you were slaves once

Psalm 47 God's Sovereignty
7 - "God is the king of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm."

Galatians 4
1-7 More about the Purpose of the Law (My paraphrase):

• Under the law, we were like under-age heirs subject to a guardian or a trustee
• When Christ came, we were finally allowed to claim our inheritance (the promise given to Abraham)
  

8-20 Another reproof from Paul

• You have come out of the bondage of idolatry, and now you want to enslave yourselves again? It's obvious they don't realize what they're getting themselves into.
  
• Friends, I beg you: In spite of my infirmities, you showed great friendship to me when I was with you. Don't shun me now for telling you the truth about these Judaizing teachers.
  
• They are manipulating you for their own purposes.
• My children: It's like I am going through childbirth again until Christ is formed in you (once again). He has appealed to them as dear friends; now he appeals to them as a mother to her children: I went through labor pains when I first taught you the gospel, and you became Christians. Please don't put me through the pain of childbirth again!
• I just don't understand you!

21-31 Hagar and Sarah

• Let's look at (Father) Abraham again.
• The mothers of his children are like the two covenants.
• Hagar represents the slavery of the law.
• Sarah and Isaac represent the freedom of being the children of promise, not of slavery.
• Just as Ishmael persecuted Isaac (see Genesis 21:9, where the NRSV "playing" is translated "mocking" in other versions), so the fleshly children (the Judaizers) are persecuting you.
• You are free now; don't become slaves again. It's like the Israelites wanting to go back into Egypt where there were onions and leeks, "the good life." They quickly forgot the hardships of Egypt. The difference in this case is that these Gentiles had not experienced the bondage of Judaism, so Paul is trying to warn them: You don't want to go there!